ARCHITECTURE FOR SUPPORTING SPARSE VOLUMES
First Claim
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1. A storage system, comprising:
- a storage operating system executed by a processor, the storage operating system configured to generate a sparse volume, wherein the sparse volume comprises a structure marked with a value to identify that data of the sparse volume is not stored locally on a first storage system serving the sparse volume; and
a protocol module of the storage operating system configured to implement a protocol for remote retrieval of the data from a second storage system in response to a determination that the structure of the sparse volume has the value.
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Abstract
An architecture, including a file-level protocol, for supporting sparse volumes on a storage system is provided. The file-level protocol provides coherency checking for use in retrieving data stored on a backing store remote from a storage system.
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Citations
33 Claims
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1. A storage system, comprising:
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a storage operating system executed by a processor, the storage operating system configured to generate a sparse volume, wherein the sparse volume comprises a structure marked with a value to identify that data of the sparse volume is not stored locally on a first storage system serving the sparse volume; and a protocol module of the storage operating system configured to implement a protocol for remote retrieval of the data from a second storage system in response to a determination that the structure of the sparse volume has the value. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20)
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18. The system of clam 1 wherein the storage operating system is further configured to assign pointer values to indirect blocks of data retrieved from the backing store and stored locally.
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21. A method for operating a storage system, comprising:
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generating a sparse volume by a processor executing a storage operating system of a first storage system, wherein the sparse volume comprises a structure marked with a value to identify that data of the sparse volume is not stored locally on a first storage system serving the sparse volume; and determining that the structure of the sparse volume has the value, and in response, implementing a protocol for remote retrieval of the data from a second storage system. - View Dependent Claims (22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29)
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30. A computer readable storage medium storing executable program instructions executed by a processor, comprising:
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program instructions that generate, by a processor executing a storage operating system of a first storage system, a sparse volume, wherein the sparse volume comprises a space reserved data container; program instructions that mark a structure of the sparse volume with a value to identify that data of the sparse volume is not stored locally on the first storage system serving the sparse volume, wherein the data is stored locally on a second storage system; and program instructions that determine that the structure of the sparse volume has the ii value, and in response, program instructions that implement a protocol for remote retrieval of the data from the second storage system.
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31. A method for operating a computer data storage system, comprising:
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storing first data locally and storing second data on a remote storage system; placing an absent data pointer in a tree of pointers used to find requested data; and retrieving the requested data from the remote storage system in response to finding the absent data pointer while searching the tree of pointers for the requested data. - View Dependent Claims (32)
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33. A computer data storage system apparatus, comprising:
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first data stored locally and second data stored on a remote storage system; an absent data block pointer placed in a tree of pointers used to find a requested data block; and s a remote protocol module configured to retrieve the requested data block from the remote storage system in response to finding the absent data block pointer while searching the tree of pointers for the requested data block.
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Specification